


oats

by lizzieraindrops



Series: A midnight study in purple [7]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen, Music
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-24
Updated: 2016-03-24
Packaged: 2018-05-28 19:55:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6343048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizzieraindrops/pseuds/lizzieraindrops
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Veera listens to music to unwind. Set just before <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/6265150"><i>good lamb black sheep</i></a>, but can also be a standalone. A oneshot originally posted for a prompt <a href="http://lizzieraindrops.tumblr.com/post/141612360949/if-youre-still-doing-flower-prompts-veera-oats">on tumblr</a>.</p><p>
  <i>Oats: the witching soul of music</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	oats

She's just checked into the dun-yellow drear of a poorly-lit motel, and music is a tool.

 _Eleven forty-five now_ , she thinks to herself. _Commence tomorrow's operation at three, catch the bus to the city centre at one-fifteen, catch the bus from the outskirts at twelve. Check out of the motel at ten, find lunch and walk the two miles to the bus stop._

She drops her backpack on the tiny bed in the middle of the pallid room, and does her customary double-sweep for bugs. She finds nothing except the organic kind, in excess. A shudder squirms over her skin.

_Double check all intel and safeguards before leaving, so wake up at eight-thirty. Everything must go smoothly. Oh, need to repack my bag, too, better make it eight. For optimal rest, get seven and a half hours of sleep: five REM cycles. That means fall asleep at twelve-thirty. Oh god, that's in forty-five minutes. I've got to wind down. I've got to sleep. Got to sleep soon._

She twists the hexagonal plastic rod that controls the blinds on the single window, making sure they're completely closed. Double-checks both locks on the door. Then she sits down in the very center of the bed, cross-legged, and hugs her backpack to her. The room is so small, but she feels even smaller. Especially considering the enormity of the task she's going to try and pull off tomorrow. Tomorrow, she is going to walk straight into the heart of DYAD's lair, steal key research about Project Leda from right between the dragon's teeth, and attempt to walk back out again.

She has never felt so incredibly alone.

A tremor stirs in her core and tries to rattle its way into her limbs, but she clutches her backpack even tighter against her chest, crushing it into stillness with the counterpressure. God, she feels like she's always shaking. Once she's sure the trembling is quelled, she unlocks her stiff arms and unzips her backpack. There's her Walkman. Hood down, earphones on, hood up, five seconds. Press play.

Her buzzing nerves are strung so tight, she'll need music to match their energy first, then work her way to something softer to bring herself down. It's exactly like tuning a synthetic string to an ambient pitch, so that it resonates all on its own, but the resonance is her own internal clamor. Start with the symphonic fullness of metal turned up _loud_ , the almost overwhelming dissonance and consonance stunning her senses into paying full attention. Fast-paced rhythms give her troubled heart a pattern to beat to. She nods along with the meter, and it's more than a nod: it moves her whole body. She tries not to think about what it looks like: she knows, and she hates how much attention it attracts. But nobody's looking, and she's _got_ to calm down if she's going to fall asleep anytime soon.

Soon, the satisfying blast of soundwaves hitting her ears starts sounding _too_ loud, so she turns it down a bit. Switches gears. Swaps out disks: dark electronic. Strong but slower beat, enough sustained ambient sounds to keep her senses engaged, but fewer lines of melody and harmony to occupy her mind. Synthetic staccato snaps pluck gently at her skin. The frayed edges of her nerves have stopped sparking. Every beat is a descending step down a seemingly endless stair of nervous energy. Her guard starts slipping, crumbling down, as she lets herself acknowledge the myriad aches that stack up on her body, mind, and heart all day long, til she feels like one more glance in her direction will make her stumble and fall pancake-flat beneath them all. She toes off her purple sneakers and tips them off the edge of the bed. She really hopes nothing crawls into them overnight.

Four or five songs later, anxious anticipation is collapsing into exhaustion. Time to slack the strings and retune once again, to yet another key of energy and emotion. She flips through her compact disc carrier one more time, this time selecting an album of somber cello instrumentals. She's relaxed _just_ enough that the thrum of strings can settle in between the fibers of her shoulder muscles, coaxing them into giving up even more of their tautness. She flops down against the pillow, letting their resonance run up and down her body, bleeding tension off of her like dye into clean water.

Her eyes closed a long time ago. She slits them open to squint at her watch. _Twelve fifteen. Good._ She'll fall asleep soon. She changes out of her jeans and twists the covers of the bed into a nest, still listening. She wrangles her pajamas on over her headphones, feeding her Walkman and its wire through the collar of the soft cotton shirt so she doesn't have to stop listening. She double-checks her alarm on her watch, then sinks again into the slow surge of patterned sound. It's like a physical thing, a tide smoothing down her neck and back and legs; she's the sea. Soon, her thoughts themselves have taken the form of sounds; and she is safe, briefly, wrapped in music. She's made of sound. Nothing but a morass of vibrations in flow.

She's almost gone, completely dissolved, when the CD stops spinning and silence descends, reminding her to take off the headphones. She halfheartedly paws the foam earpieces off of her head, shoves them toward her backpack. It's still laying on the bed within arm's reach. Just in case.

She sighs - in exhaustion, contentment, resignation, satisfaction, melancholy? Some combination thereof. She doesn't know. They're all just sounds, different voices in the same harmony. Her body goes completely slack and she drops off the continental shelf into the pelagic depths of sleep.


End file.
